Richlands' Knapp again finds her love for volleyball

Friday

The senior leader missed the back half of last season after gall bladder surgery

BROAD CREEK – Barely a year after taking up volleyball, Richlands' Cierra Knapp had a secret – a painful one.

“I was in a lot of pain, excruciating pain, and I couldn’t keep anything down to the point that I felt I was going to die,” she said. “I was just trying to push it off until after volleyball.”

But she was unable to, and in September underwent laparoscopic surgery to have her gallbladder removed. It forced her to miss much of the second half of her junior season.

After receiving the diagnosis, the 17-year-old Knapp still tried to put off surgery.

“I was surprised. I was like, ‘Okay, do I even need it?’” she recalled. “Honestly, I cried when I got into the car because they told me I had to get surgery the next day.”

While she was able to go home the same day as her surgery, Knapp was out of school for two weeks and off the court for about six weeks.

“I fell in love with volleyball from the first time I played my sophomore year, but I never understood how much I loved it until I was willing to put myself through all that pain just to play,” Knapp said during a break at summer league action at Croatan High School.

Sitting out did more than make her appreciate how much she missed playing the game. It also gave her an education.

“I’ve learned the game more by forcing myself to sit down,” she said. “The time I couldn’t play I still went to the games when I could. I would FaceTime – we had JV players who would live the game for me to watch it.”

Knapp took up the sport after going to games to support her friends who were on the team, including Brooke Monssen, The Daily News player of the year in 2015 who is now playing for Charleston Southern University.

“I watched her play and I was like, ‘I want to do that,’” Knapp said. "I saw the joy she had for the game and I wanted that.

“And how many times she hit people in the face – and I wanted that,” she added, laughing. “I wanted that – absolutely.”

Not that Knapp felt comfortable on the court initially. Far from it.

“We were at open gym. We had some very strong players on the varsity that year, and Coach (Ashton) Allgood was very good about taking the ones that needed help like myself and taking us aside to teach us what was going on.

“But I didn’t like getting hit in the face. I got hit in the face one time. After that, I learned how to pass, I promise you that.”

Allgood said “Cici” is a smart player who has developed “an incredible ability to read the game.”

“She does a great job of reading hitters on defense and can quickly see where to attack on offense,” Allgood said. “And although I know it killed her to be on the sidelines … due to surgery, she could still be found on the sidelines helping our attackers from holes in the other team’s defense.

“And although she doesn’t want to go into teaching or coaching, ... it wouldn’t surprise me if you saw her one day as a coach because she already would make excellent one the way she can strategize and help younger players.”

With the Wildcats losing seven seniors off last year’s 15-8 squad, Knapp said summer league and off-season workouts have been important as Richlands prepares for the 2018 season.

“(It’s) a good time for us to work together and figure out what people are good at, what we need to help people on, just form as a team honestly,” she said.

Knapp, who is a middle hitter but is “open to playing anywhere,” is also working on being a team leader.

“I’m a senior. So I feel personally I have to lead and help them because there’s a lot of transitioning right now,” she said. “We have people playing different positions. we have a new setter who’s trying to figure out everything. So my goal is to help them and then with helping me become a better player.”

Knapp is more than just a volleyball player, however.

She’s involved in a bevy of clubs at school and is part of the engineering academy at Richlands while sporting a 4.3 grade point average. She said she's been offered a scholarship to Wingate.

“It was a blessing. So I have to decide what I want to do. I believe I want to do biomedical engineering … making prosthetics with instrumentation,” she said. “But I have to go where God and my heart leads me. I just have to pray about it. I don’t know entirely what I want to do right now.”

Rick Scoppe can be reached at 910-219-8471 or via email at rick.scoppe@jdnews.com.

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